Disability Futures

Stereotypes affect how other people think about and treat autistic people. Fictional portrayals of autistic characters often reflect and amplify these stereotypes. There’s no research on how fiction affects real-life stereotypes about autistic people, but we know fiction affects attitudes toward people with mental illness, and television shows with positive gay characters increase support of marriage equality.

Fiction very likely influences attitudes toward autistic people too—meaning that harmful portrayals can have damaging effects on actual autistic people, whereas more realistic, richer portrayals can have positive real-world effects. Portrayals of autistic characters also affect how real-life autistic people view ourselves: Are we shown as real people with both strengths and difficulties, people with meaningful internal experiences who undergo realistic character growth, and who are as human and as valuable as non-autistic people?

In this article, I review common tropes in fiction (mainly kid lit) that mirror and reinforce real-life stereotypes, with links to book reviews or commentary, to blog posts describing relevant real-world experiences, and sometimes to news stories or research. (Note that these are by many different people, and I don’t always agree with every point they bring up or every way they talk about autistic people or disability in general.)